Peninsula

Lancers make it back to top of CCS water polo

By Vytas Mazeika

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted:
11/19/2012 11:41:44 PM PST

Updated:
11/19/2012 11:41:45 PM PST

SANTA CLARA -- Brittany Kirwan knew how she felt. The St. Francis-Mountain View senior just didn't know how to put it into words. Not after the Lancers won their first Central Coast Section Div. I girls water polo championship since her freshman year with an 8-3 victory against Leland-San Jose on Saturday afternoon at the Santa Clara International Swim Center.

"It's indescribable how much we all wanted it," Kirwan said. "We've been literally working for this since our freshman year. We dove in the water on the first day of tryouts and this is the end goal. WCAL is like nothing compared to this. I can't even describe it. I'm just elated."

Kirwan is one of nine seniors on the roster for top-seeded St. Francis (25-4), which won back-to-back CCS titles in 2008 and 2009. But the Lancers lost in the previous two CCS finals, including 12-7 last year to No. 2 Leland (23-6).

Not this time. Not if Kirwan had anything to say about it.

"That was her best game, for sure," St. Francis coach Brendon Reutebuch said. "You could see the emotion. She was crying after the game. She worked really hard to get to this point and improved tremendously from last year to this year. And hard work pays off."

With tensions rising after a scoreless first quarter, Leland drew a rare exclusion of St. Francis goalie Katherine Moore. This forced the Lancers to line up four players across the cage during the 20-second power play, and it was Kirwan who got her left hand on a point-blank shot to preserve the first-half shutout.

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Moments later, St. Francis senior Tegan Stanbach chased down a rebound in front of the net, turned away from the keeper and fired a backhand into the empty cage for a 1-0 lead with 4:40 left in the second quarter.

"When the first goal happened, it was sort of like, 'OK, we got this,'" Kirwan said.

Eela Nagaraj and Courtney Batcheller scored the next two goals for the Lancers, with Kirwan extending the lead to 4-0 with 57 seconds left prior to halftime.

"It was just a matter of opening that seal," Reutebuch said. "Once we got in, it was going to be hard to stop us."

Leland senior Jamie Nolan, arguably the top player in CCS, got on the board 19 seconds into the fourth quarter by converting a 5-meter penalty shot, but by then St. Francis led comfortably 6-1. The responsibility of slowing down Nolan fell almost exclusively on Lancers junior Sami "Shutdown" Strutner.

Six different St. Francis players scored once, including Strutner, before Kirwan came up with a steal in the fourth quarter, was fed the ball on the counter-attack and took a fadeaway lob shot with 4:43 left in the fourth quarter to make it 7-2. Batcheller later matched her two-goal effort, but the Lancers didn't flash a smile until the clock read 0:00.

"We wanted to contain all of our excitement until the very, very end," Kirwan said.

"This whole time, this was our end result," Moore said. "This is what we wanted to do, and we achieved it."